You can’t have a kid, blog, and NOT talk about poop or pee at some point. This, my friends, is that point (or at least one of those points!).

You see, Emmie is potty training. Or potty learning, as the cool kids say. Whatever, she’s mostly peeing and pooping like a civilized human being. A tiny, tiny human being.

It was pretty much her idea. She started letting me know quite consistently when she was wet by asking for a new diaper (cloth FTW!), she could tell me without fail when she had pooped, and after the purchase of a potty chair and a stool, she was more or less off to the races, with very little intervention of my own.

***(This next part is rather quite disgusting and graphic, so read with caution if you are planning on having children. If you already have them, you can likely commiserate. If you don’t want them, read this for validation)***

The thing I am most proud of Emmie for doing is the fact that she did all of this while she had the freaking STOMACH FLU. I had planned on starting the “3 day method” (with some modifications) on a Thursday. We had the undies, we had the potty, we had the stickers. We were ready. Early that morning, she woke up vomiting. Whee! Nothing like catching baby barf with your bare hands to wake you up at 3 AM! After multiple baths and costume changes (and an apparent cease fire agreement from her tummy), I asked Emmie if she wanted to wear a diaper or undies, definitely hoping for the diaper option. “Unnie” was the clear answer. So on the “unnie” went, and we forged ahead with our plan.

My sweet, brave baby… for the rest of the day, she would say “poop!” and we would run to the bathroom. Pee was no problem and she would go within seconds of sitting down. The actual “poop!” on the other hand… well, let’s just say diarrhea isn’t fun for ANYONE and it was heartbreaking to see my little girl on that big potty get so scared of the feeling coming that she would say “no! no!” and try to get off, but I had to talk her into staying since what was coming was coming NO MATTER WHAT, and no diaper was going to make that any better. In fact, I think the potty was the less traumatic option, since a diaper would have been a surefire disaster (let alone the attempt to get the diaper ON before the onslaught… ugh, I shudder to think of it). And so she soldiered on, and did a phenomenal job under the worst potty training circumstances. The only upside was that she had LOTS of “opportunities” to practice, poor thing.

But she was not scarred by the whole experience, as I was afraid might happen. She appears to have no memory of the whole terrible, terrible period (O! the carseat! Woebetide the doomed high chair straps that had to be sacrificed. And the ultimate, ultimate blessings upon Peter, who quite literally bore the worst of it. Baths all around were needed). Emmie’s poor parents shall not forget so easily.

Anyway, now she is going on the potty whenever she is awake at home, and has also gone when we are “oot and aboot,” but this still terrifies me and I still bring a bunch of backup options (diaper, trainer, extra pants). Mostly, I’m just not as good at figuring out what needs to happen when we aren’t at home.

She is doing this pretty early by most modern standards*, which has led to some mild panic among my friends with similarly-aged toddlers who are wondering if they should be further down this particular road. The realization that “different kids are different,” as my brilliant friend Jess puts it, is very helpful to me when I hear these same children speaking to their parents in full sentences. So Emmie has only put 2 words together maybe 10 times in her whole life so far? And I can only understand her if I know *exactly* what she is talking about? Ah well, at least I don’t have to do as many diapers anymore!

And that’s about all I have to say about that.

 

*In “researching” this blog post, because I am fancy like that, I found this interesting Wikipedia article about potty training. Wikipedia, to be sure, but interesting nonetheless!